[oXygen-user] Docbench / oXygen 9 release/licensing

[Khaled Aly]

Thanks for that.

I do have an "academic" oXygen license, which is inexpensive, For 
non-commercial use. I just added the free version of XEP 4 as an 
external tool and it ran perfectly. But for my so far benchmark 
documents, no difference from FOP 0.93. I do have a problem with table 
layouts that I couldn't figure yet with FOP 0.94 in general. FOP 0.93 
seems to be the best of both FOP worlds currently. XEP's response though 
gave the impression of faster processing with clearer and more organized 
runtime output. I believe that Docbench is enhanced with some of Norm 
Welsh's DocBook stylesheets.

It is not clear for me yet, if the regular oXygen 8 license will grant 
upgrade to version 9 regular. I see a trial counter declining. Can 
oXygen people please advise about that, about the new build to be made 
available as upgrades, and about the regular release of oXygen 9?

Barton Wright wrote:
> If you don't have either a XEP or oXygen license, RenderX's DocBench 
> bundle is a screaming bargain. For US$100 over the base price of XEP 
> Desktop, you get both. As I remember, what DocBench provides is the 
> standard oXygen Professional release, plus XEP in a directory parallel 
> to the FOP directory. There is very little integration, but then, not 
> much is needed. You run the standard oXygen, and can invoke a menu 
> function to generate output through XEP in addition to FOP. One minor 
> disadvantage is that DocBench starts oXygen from its own batch file, 
> not from the clean oxygen.exe executable (for Windows). The startup is 
> a little messy, and leaves a Command Prompt window hanging around.
>  
> I no longer run DocBench per se, but instead have separate oXygen and 
> XEP installations, and I call XEP from command-line build scripts.
>  
> As for FOP vs XEP, I can only speak to FOP 0.92 vs XEP 4.10. The 
> winner then was XEP by a mile. FOP-generated PDFs had trouble with 
> long tables over page breaks, and other problems that XEP sailed 
> through. I hear the FOP guys have made great strides since 0.92, and I 
> plan to give 0.94 another look. But here's a strong hint as to which 
> one's better: the PDF for Bob Stayton's DocBook XSL book is generated 
> with XEP.
>  
> That said, I caution you that there's just no way the RenderX guys 
> have caught up the latest oXygen 9.0 release, which only occurred a 
> few days ago.  If you buy DocBench today, you will almost certainly 
> get oXygen 8.2 in the bundle. However, the oXygen guys are very good 
> about sending you the latest license file, even for DocBench users.
>
> *From:*  
> [mailto:] *On Behalf Of *Khaled Aly
> *Sent:* Monday, November 05, 2007 2:09 PM
> *To:* 
> *Subject:* [oXygen-user] Docbench
>
> Hi
>
> Would oXygen or users on list have more information about this bundle: 
> http://www.renderx.com/tools/docbench.html? Advantages it may offer 
> over standalone oXygen 9 for purpose of technical authoring. It refers 
> to DocBook/TEI, but not DITA, which is supported by oXygen 9. In which 
> ways may XEP (one of the main bundle components, which can also be 
> integrated with oXygen 9) be distinct from or advantageous to FOP .94? 
> And otherwise, would the added value be mainly the offered 
> stylesheets? And would it be the same oXygen UI?
>
> Thanks
> ka 

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